


Tender is the Night (lying by your side)

by LancelotFort



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe-Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro), Clones
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28150995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LancelotFort/pseuds/LancelotFort
Summary: “I’m truly, horribly sorry,” I told him earnestly. “But what on earth is the cause? And don’t you think—forgive me for stating the obvious—that it’s really not the appropriate era for people like us to call ourselves revolutionaries?”“Yes, exactly.” Enjolras said suddenly. His voice was then graceful as a tolling bell, and he stepped on the brakes, turning to look me in the eye. “That is precisely why we are doing this.”(Set in the world of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go: the amis are clones made for organ harvest, and they run from that fate for as long as they could.)
Relationships: Combeferre & Courfeyrac (Les Misérables), Courfeyrac/Jean Prouvaire, Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Kudos: 5





	Tender is the Night (lying by your side)

**Author's Note:**

> For folks not familiar with Never Let Me Go--there won't be spoilers for its plot, but I will be using the worldview, so I put some clarifications in the end notes :~)
> 
> Narrated by R, though I also tried to lean a bit towards the tone of the Ishiguro novel, so hope it works ok.
> 
> Also, English is not my first language, so pls let me know if I made any mistakes :DD

“Rather a nice night, after all. Stars are out and everything. Exceptionally tasty assortment of them.”

—Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

1

Now, I wouldn’t go as far as to claim that retracing those long-dead memories no longer pain me. I call them long-dead only because all the protagonists are either dead or gone. As I lie on my back awaiting my fourth donation, the grotesque scent of disinfectant tickling my nose, these memories are the most living things I can think of.

And the first thing that comes to mind, strangely, is an obscure length of time before I was ambushed by the most peculiar trio in the world. It was a shapeless summer day in my twentieth year, and I was navigating my car through untrodden ground, on the way to my first assignment as a carer. It was nothing to be celebrated, but nevertheless an occasion. So I took the effort to be clean-shaven, decently and perhaps even smartly dressed, and painfully clear-headed. It was a sweet melancholy time before I had taken my first ever drink. In conclusion, I had shown up for the ambush in an unusually manicured skin. And I often wondered if for a moment, before I opened my mouth for my first retort, Enjolras saw me differently. And I wondered, once or twice to his face in our regular shouting match, if that was something to be grateful for. But I get ahead of myself.

I had both hands on the wheel, feeling the worn leather tease my palm, and hummed along to the song playing on the radio. I must have been completely out of my mind, because only as it was drawing to an end did I realize what song it was. The shock, I assume, and many other emotions I couldn’t put my finger on, hit me so brutally that I had to stop driving. It was strange because, at that moment, the song did not yet have half the meaning it now has for me. Right then it was merely a shimmer from my broken Hailsham days, when I had that tape in my collection and often listened to it as I paint. And I suppose Hailsham never failed to haunt me, although I was lucky enough to have been raised in blissful leisurely ignorance before they had to close it down and ship us over to the other institutions.

I have heard much rumor about how Hailsham was in decline years before its end, but as a witness to it I wouldn’t say it’s true. Rather, it rose to a sort of extravagant dignified glory in its final steps, and even as a child I could feel the ground enclosed by a dome of grievous warmth. Madam visited more often and took away more of our art, and the way she eyed us gained a sympathy not of unkindness. The guardians all behaved as if things have never been better, almost as if we were students who would actually grow up to be real, living people. Of course, I had reason to believe I was among a handful, if not the only one, of the students who noticed this phenomenon. I always had a feeling that Jehan Prouvaire, for instance, knew what I knew. But I mostly suspected he had been told, as I have, by Miss Lucy. I never once brought up the topic before we parted ways after Hailsham, however, although for most of our time there we were the closest. For reasons I can’t quite place I kept what Miss Lucy had said to me a grave and horrible secret, or maybe it was more about the way in which she said them.

As I sat there, clumsily anchored in the middle of the road, trying to breathe and sort through those fumbling thoughts simultaneously, it happened. At first I didn’t notice anybody approaching, until a fluttering golden gleam brushed against the corner of my eye. It was all very simple. I looked towards it and saw the utter miracle that was Enjolras.

There were three of them; it was apparent that they had meant for this to be a sort of attack, where they would have to seize my automobile and toss me into the trunk. And plotting this in their minds they had been loitering in this area for hours, without expecting their victim to halt by his own design. This change of plan had one of them rubbing his hands in disappointment, and another pursing his lips in wonder. The third, however, did not waver. He approached my window in a firm gait, and as I rolled it down in unthinking bewilderment, he spoke: “Please step out of the vehicle.”

It was such a bizarre utterance, and in any other case I would burst out laughing and inform the speaker that they had picked up too much of their demeanor from television. I felt a ballroom full of mockery waltz up my throat, but my voice was gone. I gaped in stupefied awe as Enjolras—to think that he was only seventeen then!—repeated his demand. Only then did I manage to attempt half a grin, which came out pathetic, and aborted the car to stand awkwardly between Apollo’s two companions who seemed either unable to decide if I would put up a fight, or unable to believe I was willing to be so tame about it. In the end I was invited politely to sit in the backseat, and the four of us embarked.

Having only just mastered the art of driving myself, I was nonetheless able to tell that Enjolras had never before laid his hands on a steering wheel. He must have also, I felt certain, memorized every bit there is to know about this craft save the practical. As a result his driving was a combination of righteous recklessness, ridiculous precision, and occasional fanciful flings. At the beginning we rolled forward smoothly, if not quite in a straight line, as he clearly tested out his footing. When he felt assured that this machine would not burst into flames, song or flight, we began to gain speed. Were this a nicely paved asphalt lane and the car a relatively youthful one, his methods would probably work admirably. But instead the decaying lump of manufactured junk huffed and puffed, and the rocky forest floor threatened to throw us skyward thrice a minute. He was forced to slow down as Combeferre touched his arm, and Courfeyrac hooted happily beside me.

A silence dawned. I could sense that it was the kind of silence not unfamiliar to the trio, and it embraced the three of them like a soft, tender secret. I shifted in my seat to look out the window, feeling Courfeyrac’s prodding gaze start to burn on my neck. Then he offered, with a pat on my arm: “you’re being awfully cooperative, old sport!” At this I couldn’t help chuckling. Long afterwards, when things truly began going downhill for our little group, it occurred to me that perhaps he borrowed a lot more from Jay Gatsby&friends than a catchphrase. It became clearer when he had to part with Jehan, whom he had back then yet to meet nor love. He tried so very hard to become a careless person. A part of me wished he had never succeeded in doing so.

But let us return to that happy hour, when his comment stirred up the disorienting joy of our new-found alliance, and we felt more at ease to attempt conversation. It must have been on all our minds to provide some form of clarification for this anticlimax little hijack, but as we all seemed to be still coping with the sudden lift of a severe mental stress and the possible approach of another, it was small talk we settled with. It went something like this:

COMBEFERRE: So. What do you call yourself?

ME: Well. If we get along you might be permitted to call me R.

COURFEYRAC: And the title you reserve for your enemies?

ME: Grantaire.

COURFEYRAC: Woohoo! What a pun. (Pauses) By the way, Ferre—I forgot to mention this morning, but I adore your tie.

COMBEFERRE: Why, thanks! You do remember it was a gift from you, though?

COURFEYRAC: (Smiles sweetly)You always hand me the credits.

The two behaved so like a pair that I was compelled to assume it and thus felt slightly out of place. Naturally I wondered if Enjolras had a partner himself. Not that I feel in any way that people are somehow obligated to be all happily paired up—in fact I detested the mentality. I realize that relationships and sex are only an option for the privileged of us, and even then, only for a time too brief. There is always the undying rumor that if two of us were genuinely in love there is room for negotiation, perhaps a bargain in which the couple could lead a miniature life of their own for two or three years. Many of us openly scoffed at the idea, myself being one of them. It took me very long to notice that I belonged to the best or worst of those dreamers. For it is one thing to fabricate stories of dodging fate for a fine, reasonable interval, and wholly another to actually venture on what we had done.

There was a line, you see, etched into our minds from the moment of our creation. It was the reason why we all follow suit to our fate, without having to be chained to a cell or electronically tracked like farm animals. I myself would parallel it to the way humans used to coexist with death, all the way back when clones hadn’t been a solution. They, who were capable of the wildest whims, were always innocently withholding it within a certain limit. It was imaginable to destroy the planet with nuclear energy, for instance, yet out of the question to eliminate death. Then, at some point, the line was trodden on, and the impossible thus proved possible. In our own case, the savior was Enjolras. And that is a long and melancholy tale.

I don’t recall what it was that we were talking about when Enjolras intervened. We had reached a semi-clearing in those woods, and the trees were sadder and barer. But we were doing a good job at pretending to be in high spirits, as if we had known each other intimately and were on a trip to some distant seashore that didn’t want to swallow us. And almost rudely, Enjolras called my name. “Grantaire,” he said, and we all shut our mouths.

The effect that Enjolras has over each of us differs drastically. I wouldn’t attempt to dissect his relationship with his two oldest friends, but, particularly in the earlier days, I couldn’t help trying to picture the way they knew and loved each other. They had, I learned later that day, come from one of the less tyrannical institutions. And so they were arranged, as I did as half a Hailsham graduate, to spend two summers in a cottage before moving on as carers. In our initial toying with this delicate subject called the past, it was mentioned in passing that Combeferre and Courfeyrac knew each other longer, and Enjolras had entered the picture afterwards. The implications of that statement were to be whispered into my ear by its protagonist, almost a year later, as we lay together on a tangerine motel mattress with his limbs crossed over mine.

As for myself, I would say that things between us evolved over time. I might even add that towards the end it evolved into something so alarmingly heartfelt that it could not be tamed, only strangled. Although at the beginning I had envisioned an entirely different future for us. Had he been a bit less perfect I may have dared to fabricate a possible companionship between us, the way I did with the others almost right away. Sitting in that car of which I was no longer navigator, and finding myself addressed by Enjolras, I could only feel a kind of indifference. And in a way that sentiment was the opposite of indifference, for which I really have no description even this day. I must have replied with a nameless hum, because he immediately began to speak as if he had rehearsed every word of it.

“You used to go to Hailsham,” he stated plainly, making me feel like a patient of amnesia. Then I realized that this was indeed a calculated operation, and I, if I dared to believe, a carefully selected victim.

“Yes, but I didn’t get to graduate,” I said meekly, perhaps in the hope that they had made a mistake. “It closed down when I was fourteen.”

“That is still a very long time, do you realize?” Said Enjolras, not turning to look at me. “It’s the early years that really matter—” He paused, tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, and gave Combeferre a look I couldn’t discern.

“Do you want me to do this?” Combeferre asked him quietly, with a hand on his arm again. I see this awkward imbalance of intimacy in the vast majority of us that I have met. In sexual encounters we are seldom shy to touch and grope and squeeze and embrace and entangle, and kiss our partners in ecstasy easily mistaken for affection. In other occasions, however, a casual hug could feel like too much even for intimate friends.

Enjolras fell silent, and I thought I saw exchanged between them the ghost of a smile. “It was enough time for you to be different.” He attempted again, this time with a far softer tone that took me by surprise. He let out a deep breath. “But of course you do have a choice.”

“Wonderful,” I said not without sarcasm, because all the secrecy had worn out its charm and made me feel uncomfortable. “I’ve no idea what it feels like to choose for myself.”

The atmosphere shifted, and remained forever shifted. In all honesty, I was astounded by my own daring to retort at he whose every utterance must inevitably be the truth. Combeferre saw the opportunity to take over to clarify the matter, therefore preventing what would otherwise be our first ever heated disagreement, despite the fact that we had just met. He explained in his endearing, scholarly, reassuring and calming fashion that they were “revolutionaries with a cause”—to which I couldn’t for the life of me withhold a snort of laughter. This I was at once apologetic for. Snorts of laughter means fun and good cheer with Courfeyrac, and a delicious debate with Enjolras, but whomever directs them to Combeferre would feel like the most arrogant and ill-mannered being in the world.

“I’m truly, horribly sorry,” I told him earnestly. “But what on earth is the cause? And don’t you think—forgive me for stating the obvious—that it’s really not the appropriate era for people like us to call ourselves revolutionaries?”

“Yes, exactly.” Enjolras said suddenly. His voice was then graceful as a tolling bell, and he stepped on the brakes, turning to look me in the eye. “That is precisely why we are doing this.”

And really, I should have pressed on to ask what it was they think they were doing. And the truthful answer would be that they weren’t even sure themselves. If you were to ask Enjolras, which I ultimately did, he would say that they were fighting for our souls. “But do we really have souls in the first place? I severely doubt if even humans have them.” I would ask, like any diligent cynic. And Enjolras would look at me as if I had forgotten how to tie my shoes, and say with the most painstaking, outrageous and gentle patience: “And that’s why we’re better than them.” And I would believe it with all my heart.

At that moment of choice, of religion or resignation, I suppose all of it came together as Enjolras looked at me. And it was with the utmost effort at nonchalance that I managed to supply: “Well, good enough for me.”

After that, as they say, it all began.

**Author's Note:**

> About this world:  
> *Hailsham-an institution which educates clones to create art, in order to show the world that "they have souls too" and should be treated accordingly.  
> *clones work as carers (nursing fellow clones through organ "donations") before they become donors. They would go through four donations in total. The fourth surgery will kill them, but many also die before that. When a clone dies they say they have "completed".
> 
> Thanks for reading <3333


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